Our legacy of farm-friendly presidents

AT FIRST GLANCE, it would appear that the main qualification for being president of the United States is that a candidate be a lawyer. That, at least, has been the premier profession for 24 of our nation's leaders including Barack Obama, Commander-in-Chief number 44.

Andrew Johnson was the sole tailor who took up the presidential mantle, but there were also six soldiers, two sailors, a handful of schoolteachers and professors, a banker, a businessman, a pilot, and an actor.

Surprisingly, the second most common profession after lawyer was farmer.

George Washington was one. So were John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Polk, Theodore Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Jimmy Carter. All could claim an employment history that had something to do with working the land.

The likelihood any future president will be a farmer is small. Yet when journalist Michael Pollan wrote an open letter addressed to the "Farmer-in-Chief" in the New York Times Magazine last October, he was serious about the need for America's food system - from field to table - to become a priority for the new president.

He urged the as-yet-unknown new president to acknowledge that the health-care crisis, climate change and national security all are impacted by our current reliance on fast foods, fossil fuels and an agricultural system that discourages small farmers who produce food for a local market - or puts him or her out of business.

He asked the president to "appoint a White House farmer" to plant an organic garden on the South Lawn as a model for citizens all over the country.

It wouldn't be the first time.

During World War I, Woodrow Wilson appealed to families to cultivate gardens and asked farmers to feed the nation by planting "abundant food stuffs as well as cotton," and he asked middlemen to expedite those vital shipments. He called these efforts "patriotic." He said the fate of the nation rested on its farmers, and he demanded that the government itself "stand ready to cooperate."

Wilson's victory gardens, as they came to be called, had a resurgence during World War II when they were taken up by Eleanor Roosevelt-against the advice of the USDA. In 1943, she had a garden planted on the White House lawn and citizens followed suit, turning city lots and back yards to food production. Home gardeners fed themselves from these gardens so the nation's farm output could nourish our allies and troops abroad.

In West Marin at that time, ranch children tended a victory garden beside their one-room schoolhouse at Pierce Point Ranch. In a boon to the local economy, dairymen produced what was called "emergency milk."

In a sad footnote, Japanese truck farmers raising peas on Point Reyes were taken to internment camps, and their fields abandoned. Artichoke growers of Italian descent were banned west of Highway One "for security reasons," and their crops, too, were lost.

Today, diversification has again taken hold in Marin. Some conventional dairies have transitioned to organic operations, some beef producers are marketing their meat as grass-fed, and organic row crops are increasingly seen as profitable alternatives or add-ons to traditional farming businesses.

On the national front, the 2008 Farm Bill signaled a new era for American farm policy. It included stronger protections for farmland conservation, more support for local foods, farmers markets, and healthy diets, funding for renewable energy, a safety net for farmers who experience losses beyond their control, and improvements to the food programs for low-income people. But much more needs to be done.

President Obama is unlikely to have the time or inclination to take up a hoe or get behind the wheel of a tractor, but if he holds true to his campaign promises to support local and regional food systems, to encourage young people to become the next generation of farmers, and to partner with landowners to conserve private farmland, he will prove a worthy successor to his presidential farming forefathers.

The health of the nation is in his hands.

Elisabeth Ptak is associate director/and director of outreach for Marin Agricultural Land Trust in Point Reyes Station.